Innholdsfortegnelse for October 2025 i APC

Hi everyone, I hope the year is going well for you. Team APC is doing just fine. We’ve plenty of nice new tech to play around with, and that helps us sit comfortably at above average happiness levels. Speaking of sitting comfortably, and we were, being planted in front of a monitor you love is one of PCing’s sweetest joys. A monitor is the sort of thing you settle in with and accept as something nice that never changes, but monitors are one of the fastest evolving areas of PC tech, and there are a lot of screens out there that are worth looking into (pun intended). We hauled 19 of them into the Labs this issue for a rigorous group test, so you know where things are at. These…

OpenAI made a controversial move in August by replacing all of its older GPT-4 models with a single GPT-5 model, which it claimed was more accurate, more capable, and faster than ever before. Although some users have highlighted its impressive response times and ability to pass certain technical tests, users have revolted, claiming it’s lost some creative spark, frequently provides inadequate responses, deliberately avoids emotional and sensitive topics, and performs significantly worse than its predecessors. It’s been such a backlash that OpenAI quickly re-added the previous flagship 4o model, though only for paying subscribers. It has also introduced an “auto,” “thinking,” “fast,” and “pro” mode for users of the new model. OpenAI launched GPT-5 with high hopes, describing it as the “best AI system yet,” capable of “smart, efficient” reasoning…

It’s been hard to watch as Intel has slowly morphed over the last 20 years, from ubiquitous ‘Intel Inside’ stickers establishing the brand in public consciousness, to the modern day, where on the whole, AMD chips are increasingly popular and better value. Years of mismanagement and poor judgement have put Intel on the wrong foot. Despite grants from the 2024 Chips and Science act (CHIPS Act) to bolster semiconductor making in the US, Intel is still in a precarious position. The US has also taken a US$10B stake in the company (accounting for 10% of its shares) while Japan’s Softbank has invested US$2B. Things may turn around for the company, but it’s been a long road to get here. Intel rode the microprocessing wave into the 2000s with an incredible…

PRICE $95 WEB samsung.com Samsung doesn’t typically focus on budget products, so this fitness watch stands out. Its $95 price tag significantly undercuts rivals such as our current favourite, the Fitbit Charge 6, which sells for around $198. Samsung includes all its services and its Health app in the price, so there are no hidden subscriptions needed to access more services. Note, however, that there’s no iPhone version of its app, so it’s for Android users only for now. The Fit3 has a large, bright AMOLED screen that can accommodate plenty of data. It monitors a range of fitness stats including steps walked, calories burned, heart rate, stress levels and sleep. It also offers smartwatch-style notifications and music controls, plus weather information and a collection of customisable watch faces. Navigating…

October will be here before you know it, and Microsoft will pull the plug on Windows 10 support. The great migration to Windows 11 will now have to begin and if you still haven’t decided what to do, then (like a doctor with a concerned look on his face) I’m here to talk you through your options. For the past year, barely a day has passed when I haven’t had this complicated conversation with a customer, so APC has asked me to empty my brain and give you advice on what to do with your Windows 10 machine. We’ll look at your hardware, explain the upgrade options for AMD and Intel, for desktops and laptops, helping you to create a plan of action. Let’s begin by working out exactly what…

PRICE $119 from aoc.com This 24in Full HD monitor couldn’t be any more different to most of the higher-end screens in this Labs if it came in neon green and spoke Russian. It’s basic, it’s small, it’s cheap – and while it was never going to vie for awards there are plenty of factors in its favour. Most important of all, the AOC 24B3HA2’s image quality is far better than you might expect for the price. Stick to the native colour mode and this 1,920 x 1,080 panel covers a respectable 71% of the DCI-P3 gamut, which compares well to many budget monitors we’ve seen. Colours don’t exactly pop, but nor is it dull. There’s also an sRGB mode, which locks well to that gamut and means whites appear a…

There was a time when you could stick a USB-C port onto a monitor, throw in a couple of USB-A ports, and consider the docking box ticked. So long as the USB-C port could feed enough power into the laptop – and 65W is plenty for most – surely punters had everything they needed: plug in the laptop with a single USB-C cable when at the desk, unplug it when it’s time to leave. But as this Labs shows, several manufacturers have upped the ante. Part of that comes from the available power on offer, with many USB-C ports now capable of delivering 90W to 100W. That’s enough to feed a MacBook Pro and even some gaming/creative laptops. The next big tick to look for is wired networking, with ten…

PRICE $379 from dell.com Take care if you choose this monitor: it comes with three different resolution panels (Full HD, QHD or the tested 4K), and you can select each with or without USB-C. The price changes – but the looks stay the same, with a chic design distinguished by ultra-slim bezels and a matt white stand. It’s definitely one of the most stylish monitors around. Dell takes the unusual step of hiding away the USB hub, which consists of a USB-A and USB-C port in a pop-down unit at the bottom left of the bezel. It’s neat, until you plug cables in and they remain visible. A second USB-A port sits in a cavity at the rear, which is also where you’ll find one of the two HDMI 2.1…

PRICE $504from iiyama.com It shouldn’t surprise us to see a high-quality yet superb-value Iiyama monitor, because that’s what the company has produced for years. Here it delivers a 27in QHD (2,560 x 1,440) display based on a lily-white IPS panel. Although anyone hoping for wide colour gamuts should look elsewhere: it covers 77% of the DCI-P3 space compared to 97% of the ViewSonic VP2788-5K, to take an expensive example, and that means you miss out on lush hues in scenery. The Iiyama display performed excellently in our colour accuracy tests, however, and its peak brightness of 317cd/m2 is more than enough for office locations. We found it usable at half that brightness. In terms of features, it’s quicker to cover what the XUB2797QSN doesn’t include. First, there’s no USB-B port,…

PRICE $883 from asus.com The Asus ZenScreen MS27UC is part of a growing trend to inject streaming TV services into monitors, grouped under the hazy term “Smart Monitor”. It’s a boring name but a fascinating product category, because it appears to meet our changing habits: the office has moved to our homes, with different parts of people’s accommodation doubling as a place of work during the day and somewhere to play at night. You can see why a monitor that can essentially double as a TV appeals in such scenarios, not to mention for students who spend so much time in their rooms. Asus isn’t alone in producing Smart Monitors, with both LG and Samsung established vendors in this space. Where it differs is by using Google TV as its…

PRICE $743 from hp.com When it was released back in 2021, this monitor ticked all the right boxes – by which we primarily mean that it supported USB-C. But here we are in 2025 and its 65W output looks weak, albeit still enough to power typical office laptops, while it loses out on increasingly common wired networking ports. Another sign of its age is that all the ports in its USB hub are USB-A, with no USB-C option, and they’re tucked awkwardly at the rear. This is where you’ll also find DisplayPort 1.2 and HDMI 2.0 connectors, plus a USB-B input so that you can share peripherals (keyboards, mice, external drives for example) plugged into the USB-A ports between computers. Compared to rivals, the P34hc’s peak brightness of 262cd/m2 seems…

PRICE $1,227 from viewsonic.com The 34in curved ViewSonic VG3457CV is designed to be a one-stop, do-it-all docking monitor. Along with the usual physical network port and USB hub, it provides a Zoom-certified 5MP webcam complete with microphone and fill-in LEDs – not needed in good lighting, where this webcam excels, but they provided a helpful lift in darker situations. You can tune the fill-in lighting with settings for brightness and warmth, and unlike the Iiyama ProLite XCB3497WQSNPH the camera has a limited amount of tilt. It’s a pop-up webcam so hides away for privacy, but it’s nice to see support for Windows Hello. However, it feels plasticky, and on the first sample ViewSonic sent us the camera didn’t work – this makes us worry about durability, although the excellent five-year…

If you know me well then you will have heard me wax lyrical about the comedy writer John Finnemore, perhaps most famous for the excellent radio show Cabin Pressure (starring Benedict Cumberbatch, Roger Allam and the brilliant Stephanie Cole) and his contribution to the Paddington films. But he also wrote a sketch about choice. “First,” the narrator intones, “there was no choice.” “This is it,” says a car salesman. “It’s big, it’s grey and it sometimes catches fire.” The next step: not enough choice. “All right, there are two kinds,” explains the salesman. “There are the big grey ones that sometimes catch fire, or these small brown ones that don’t work.” “Then, for about five minutes, there was just enough choice,” says the narrator. Cue the salesman. “All right, you…

CHROME Upgrade your passwords to passkeys Chrome 136 (released in May) adds a useful option to the browser’s password manager to help protect your online accounts. It automatically upgrades your passwords to passkeys, so you can sign into websites more quickly and securely using your fingerprint, face or other screen-lock method. This only works on sites that support passkeys, which you’ve recently signed into using a saved password. The site will confirm a passkey has been created (you can still sign in using a password) and save it to Chrome’s password manager. The new option is enabled by default, but if you’d rather stick solely with passwords you can turn it off. Click Chrome’s three-dot menu button and choose Settings, then ‘Autofill and passwords’. Click ‘Google Password Manager’, select Settings…

LIBREOFFICE CALC Open pivot tables exported to Microsoft Excel Pivot tables in spreadsheets quickly summarise and analyse your data. Unlike a standard ‘static’ table, you can rearrange rows and columns to spot patterns and calculate totals without changing any of the original data. They’re extremely useful, so we’re pleased that LibreOffice has updated Calc so you can fully export them to Microsoft Excel. Previously, when you saved a Calc spreadsheet as an Excel (XLSX) file, pivot tables lost all their data when you reopened the file in Excel. This meant you had to right-click them and select Refresh (see screenshot 1 above) to bring back the data. LibreOffice fixed this in the update 25.2.3, which arrived at the end of April. It means when you now open pivot tables in…

PRICE Free PLATFORM PC WEB bit.ly/TheNewFlesh In this first-person exploration game, you’ve arrived in a weird parallel city looking for videotapes to cram into a flasher’s abdominal cavity. This creepy fella is your first quest-giver, though to be fair the tapes aren’t hard to find, as you explore a chunk of an empty city and get teleported to several fantastical locations. It’s like someone lopped off a wing of Cosmo D’s surreal exploration game Off-Peak, then made it a licensed tie-in for the band Red Vox. So yes, that last bit: this game is sort of a promotional thing, containing a few songs from the band’s upcoming album. These songs trigger as you enter certain locations, and usually accompany ambitious, playable sequences that contort or otherwise transform the environment around…

Download these APC exclusives free from: www.apcmag.com/exclusives STELLAR DRIVE MONITOR MONITOR HARD DISK’S TEMPERATURE, PERFORMANCE, AND HEALTH. Stellar Drive Monitor is a powerful software that continuously checks the storage drive’s overall performance. It detects and alerts the user about any anomaly on the hard drive. This amazing hard disk health check software provides real-time information on the temperature, performance, and health of a drive. The software is not only a hard drive health check tool but also keeps an eye on each hard drive partition. It provides information like partition name, health status (healthy or failing), total storage capacity, free space as a percentage of total space, and more. Stellar Drive Monitor is a comprehensive hard drive health check tool that facilitates hard disk scanning for bad sectors. It thoroughly…

Last month some quarters of the videogame industry were in shambles. It wasn’t due to mass lay-offs at major studios – though they assuredly happened – nor did Bobby Kotick, Phil Spencer or Shawn Layden say anything controversial enough to foment impassioned discourse. No, nothing like that: the industry fell into tumult because an adventure platforming game made by a tiny Adelaide team was released after eight years in development. Hollow Knight Silksong follows the huge success of the 2017 original, which had its origins as a Kickstarter-funded project. In an industry increasingly accustomed to unlikely success stories, the meteoric rise of Hollow Knight still seems puzzling on paper. It’s a dark, uncompromisingly difficult sidescrolling adventure that demands a lot of the player in terms of patience, dexterity and curiosity.…

We all know that AI has an uncanny ability to generate text, graphics and videos from scratch. But it can also work wonders with your existing photos and videos, applying complicated adjustments and edits that would be tricky and time-consuming to accomplish by hand, and producing professional-quality results – most of the time, at least. Since AI operations demand a lot of computing power, the best services for working with images and videos almost always cost money – but depending on your requirements there are often cheap and free options available. Here’s a rundown of what you can do, along with our favourite tools for such jobs, whether you’re working with stills or moving images. UPSCALE LOW-RESOLUTION PHOTOS AND VIDEO Low-resolution images are a pain. They look cheap on the…

PRICE $787from asus.com There’s one problem with most portable monitors: they’re just as small as the screen on the laptop they aim to complement. Asus solves that dilemma with a comparatively giant 24in monitor that you can stuff into a suitcase for travel as it only weighs 2.9kg. That doesn’t include the stand or any screen protection, however, and don’t forget to pack the compact 90W AC adapter. Spreading 1,920 x 1,080 pixels over a 23.8in diagonal results in a 93ppi pixel density so text isn’t ultra-sharp. However, it’s so much easier to work on two windows side by side with a monitor such as this than a 15.6in panel, so if you chuck in a keyboard and mouse you should be able to reach similar levels of productivity in,…

PRICE $491from acer.com We need to tackle this monitor’s great weakness from the start: it doesn’t include a USB-C input. You’re stuck with one DisplayPort and two HDMI ports, and no fancy luxuries such as USB hubs or RJ45 networking. All of which makes this sound like a bottom-of-the-pile, budget 27in monitor, but as soon as you switch it on you’ll discover that this is far from the case. First of all, let’s talk about the clarity of the Vero CB272K’s whites. Choose the sRGB mode and it locks down near perfectly, marrying 95% coverage with 95% of volume. That means every colour you see falls in the sRGB gamut. With strong colour accuracy to back this up, you can trust what you see. You won’t get the sheer breadth…

PRICE $1,700from eizo.com Eizo describes the EV2740X as “premium 4K for business”, and we can’t think of a better set of words to describe it. This monitor is designed to be rolled out en masse so that users can plug it in and enjoy top-quality images while admin teams can manage them from afar. That’s possible thanks to a built-in RJ45 connector and the Screen InStyle software, which gives IT control over energy usage – by forcing the monitor into Eco Mode – and colour profiles. That may seem draconian, but if this is a shared monitor you want everyone to plug into it and enjoy what they see. And enjoy it they will. Anyone who spends most of their time in Excel or Word will love the clean whites:…

PRICE $479from msi.com The MSI brand springs to mind when thinking about graphics cards and motherboards, but it has a long history of producing displays, too. And not just gaming offerings: we’ve been impressed by MSI’s business-focused range before, and this is yet another solid performer. We say solid rather than outstanding because the 27in 2,560 x 1,440 panel has modest colour coverage, with 73% of the DCI-P3 gamut within its range. That means colours lack the pop of the HP Series 5 Pro 527pm, say, so anyone hoping to be entertained should look elsewhere. Instead, think of this as a work-focused panel. We suggest you play around with the colour temperature, however, with whites not looking their best in sRGB mode due to a cool-ish 6090K colour temperature. We…

PRICE $1,999from benq.com One monitor looms large in the background when reviewing the BenQ DesignVue PD2730S: the Apple Studio Display. They’re both 5K screens, and both designed to complement Apple computers with Thunderbolt 4 outputs, but while the Studio Display costs $2,499 with the standard glass and stand – rising to $3,599 if you select the Nano-texture glass and height-adjustable stand – you can pick up the BenQ for a $2,000. The great thing about this BenQ display is that, when it comes to image quality at least, you’re making no compromises. It’s pre-calibrated to hit the sRGB, Display P3 and DCI-P3 gamuts almost perfectly, along with matching the colour profile found on MacBooks (BenQ calls this M-book). It even comes with a licence for BenQ’s Ultimate Palette calibration software,…

PRICE $699 from msi.com The MSI Modern MD342CQPW pulls off the neat trick of being one of the cheapest 34in curved monitor on test while looking like the most expensive. The next trick: to actually be a high-quality 3,440 x 1,440 panel, with an excellent set of results in our technical tests. Far more expensive panels failed to cover 87% of the DCI-P3 gamut, while its average Delta E of 0.52 puts it right up there with the best. Those who prefer to work in the sRGB gamut – where whites look a shade whiter – will also find much to love, as switching to that mode locked it to 95% of the space with a mere 1% overspill. Only its peak measured brightness of 261cd/m2 (lower than the 300cd/m2…

PRICE $634 from iiyama.com The Iiyama ProLite XCB3497WQSNP is one of five monitors in this Labs to be based around a 34in curved panel with a 3,440 x 1,440 resolution, and we can understand why it’s so popular. It’s almost equivalent to having two monitors on your desk, with an extravagant 21:9 aspect ratio that provides room for four, even five, windows side by side. The ProLite is our pick of them all for the simple reason that Iiyama covers all the most important bases at a more competitive price than the feature-laden Philips 34B2U6603CH. So you don’t get Thunderbolt 4 or daisy chaining, but the USB-C connector can output up to 95W of power, and if you want to connect other computers you have two HDMI ports and one…

Find the best deals on new gear at getprice.com/au Premium laptops Apple MacBook Pro M4 ONE OF THE BEST LAPTOPS THAT’S EVER BEEN MADE. This M4 update to the already brilliant MacBook Pro line is an easy recommendation, so the big question becomes do you choose the 14in version or 16in. But whatever you choose should last for years, and look great while it’s doing it. From $2,499, apple.com/au THE ALTERNATIVES ASUS ZENBOOK A14 This affordable and super-slim laptop with a 14in OLED panel has all the performance most people need at a very competitive price, and it boasts fantastic build quality. $1,999, asus.com APPLE MACBOOK AIR M4 If you don’t need the all-out power of the Pro, this is a brilliant, cheaper alternative despite the unchanged chassis and screen.…

CLAUDE Search the web for up-to-date information In our AI experiences in the past, we predicted that when Anthropic added web-search capabilities to the free version of Claude (www.claude.ai), the AI assistant would produce higher-quality responses. That’s now come to pass and all Claude users have access to web search through its new Sonnet 4 language model. Like ChatGPT, Claude automatically searches the web when it determines a query would “benefit from up-to-date information or specialised knowledge”. This means you can ask it about current events, get the weather forecast and search for topics not covered in Claude’s training data. Claude displays a ‘Searching the web’ message (see screenshot above) when using this mode, and cites the sources of the details it provides. GEMINI Edit images using text prompts As…

PRICE Free PLATFORM PC WEB bit.ly/OnesExile Games about grim survival usually invite us to make hard choices by killing or betraying other people, but what if the person you have to betray is yourself? That’s the question One’s Own Exile grapples with, as you try to escape a society where difference is feared, and ultimately eliminated. Sybil, the protagonist, outlines it neatly at the start, saying that she will need to cut her long hair, throw her religious items away, basically destroy all trace of her culture to pass the checkpoint and survive the witch hunt that is coming for her. And that’s not even the hardest part, as she contemplates searing away her tattoos. You have these tasks to perform in the town, and every step is horrifying to…

The AM4 platform, which underpinned AMD’s success with its Ryzen-based CPUs, is one of the pillars of AMD’s strategy in making its platform more desirable than Intel’s. It offered a consistent long-lived platform which consumers can rely on being able to upgrade for many years later. It’s worked so well, in fact, that since its introduction in 2016 there have been CPUs released for AM4 every single year, right up to and including 2025. That’s a whopping nine years of support! From pre-Ryzen era Athlon X4 CPUs right through to this year’s release of the Ryzen 5 5500X3D, it’s had an amazing lifespan and continues to this day as the best option for those on a budget. All good things must come to an end, however, and it’s beginning to…

There is a potentially fun and funky new Wi-Fi protocol that will become available with your mobile devices soon. Called Wi-Fi Aware, it’s an enhancement of the existing and largely ignored Wi-Fi Direct peer-to-peer protocol. And I’m genuinely excited. Available on Android and Apple devices alike, Wi-Fi Aware allows one device to find another device and make a direct connection between the two. No base station or router is required, no need for a wider internet connection. A device can publish a list of protocols and interfaces that it supports, and then a new client device can discover them and attach on as appropriate. This is usually to be done at the application layer, allowing for an app to discover other instances of itself. The idea is that you can…

PRICE $1,299 WEB rog.asus.com The ROG Crosshair X870E Apex is a focused AM5 board aimed at builders and overclockers who care most about peak memory speed, clean signalling and voltage stability. It targets the Ryzen 9000 series, but also supports 8000 and 7000 series CPUs, with an ATX footprint and using a two DIMM layout to prioritise trace length and stability. In other words, if you want a home for very fast DDR5, dense NVMe storage and high-speed external devices, or to tweak settings and squeeze out performance, this is the board for you. The memory system stands out with two slots – meaning shorter traces and better ability to hit higher frequencies and tighter timings. The Apex supports up to 128GB of DDR5 across two sticks, and overclocker Safedisk…

PRICE $199 WEB contourdesign.com This wireless ergonomic mouse has a unique split-folding, adjustable design that lets you set the exact angle for your wrist. With a range between 35 and 70 degrees, it lets you start with a flatter angle and gradually increase it – ideal if you’re transitioning from a traditional mouse. The hinge mechanism for adjusting this angle can be quite stiff, but it remains stable while in place, and it doesn’t wobble. While it looks basic, the Unimouse feels premium thanks to textured padding where your fingers rest. Overall, it works well, gliding effortlessly across surfaces with well-placed main buttons that are easy to reach. The companion Windows app offers a range of customisation tools, allowing you to reassign button functions and create shortcuts making it easier…

PRICE $130 WEB oneplus.com This fourth generation of earbuds from Chinese manufacturer OnePlus has made an impressive leap in quality and features – specifically its noise-cancelling, which is the best we’ve come across at this price. In our tests, it completely eradicated background noise, no matter how loud it was. Previously, you’d need to spend twice the price of these earbuds to find noise-cancellation as good as this. The design is also top notch. The buds themselves weigh less than 5g each and are incredibly comfortable to wear for long periods. Likewise, the charging case is small and lightweight. Overall sound quality is outstanding, with a strong focus on bass, but this is well balanced with higher notes, which are never drowned out. Vocals, guitar rhythms and piano harmonies all…

PRICE US$9.99 (lifetime licence) NEEDS macOS 10.14.6 or later WEB Mac App Store Among Preview’s virtues is its ability to fill PDF forms, with AutoFill to complete information drawn from your Contacts details. If you’ve ever tried using it for real, though, you’ll have discovered it’s far from perfect, skips some fields you need to use, and doesn’t handle checkboxes well. Fillably is a lightweight app that does one thing better than any of the more general PDF editors: it helps you design and construct forms that work properly in Preview. Concentrating on this single function makes Fillably both quick and simple to use and powerful, as shown in its interactive tutorial that it opens the first time you run the app. This takes you through turning a tax statement…

PRICE $687from eizoglobal.com The Eizo FlexScan EV2410R stands out from the 24in crowd – admittedly a thinning crowd due to the dominance of 27in screens – thanks to its 16:10 aspect ratio and array of ports. Eizo opts for old-style DVI-D and VGA connectors to keep the HDMI and DisplayPort inputs company, which is a calculated move: this monitor is designed for environments such as healthcare and education that rely on equipment using these old standards. There’s no USB-C input, but there is a USB-B port along with four USB-A ports: two sit at the back, the other two on the left-hand side for easy access. You’ll also find a 3.5mm headphone jack along with a line out, and although it’s always good to see built-in speakers the weedy pair…

PRICE $459from benq.com Unlike the glamorous BenQ DesignVue PD2730S, the GW2790QT is targeted at office users. That means a much less expansive colour gamut, one that’s essentially tied to the sRGB colour space – so don’t expect vivid imagery. The colours that you do see are accurate, however, with an excellent average Delta E of 0.41. It’s also sharp, with the 2,560 x 1,440 pixels a great fit for a 27in diagonal. BenQ’s intuitive OSD is easy to navigate using the joystick, with a selection of Color Modes to jump between: Standard, Coding, Care Mode, Movie, Game, ePaper (sepia) and User. Using the latter you can tweak the colour temperature, and we found doing this produced a cleaner white than default – it’s so easy to do you might as…

PRICE $399 from hp.com While it’s highly subjective, the HP Series 5 Pro 527pq earns our prize as the best-looking 27in display on test, with slim bezels matched to a minimalist matte silver stand. It’s maxi when it comes to movement, though, with pivot support, 150mm of height adjustment and the ability to swivel 45° both left and right. Cable management is easier than most as they plug in horizontally rather than vertically, which avoids cables dropping below the screen; it’s further helped by a neat cable tidy that sits hidden behind the slim rod of the stand. There’s no shortage of potential wires thanks to an RJ45 port, USB-B port and a trio of video inputs: USB-C (feeding up to 100W of power), HDMI and DisplayPort. There’s also a…

PRICE $1,579from viewsonic.com If we gave awards on the basis of features alone, this display would walk away with a cabinet’s worth. The two Thunderbolt 4 ports mean you can daisy-chain two together and view a staggering number of pixels in a compact area: imagine having two 5,120 x 2,880 screens side by side. The second panel will require its own power supply, though, as the “down stream” port can only feed up to 15W. The VP2788-5K includes a separate power brick, and it’s meaty at 230W. Still, with up to 100W of that feeding a connected laptop and 15W going to a separate USB-C port, you can see how the power is used up. There are also HDMI and DisplayPort inputs at the rear, and if you connect a…

PRICE $279 from acer.com Acer is a proven master of delivering great-value products, and that’s precisely what it achieves here: a 31.5in panel and USB-C connectivity for $280 is impossible to knock. And while others strip down the quality of the stand to achieve such a low price, the SH322QU provides a respectable 100mm of height adjustment and the ability to swivel 360°. The monitor even looks attractive, with slim bezels and housing. Some of this svelteness is achieved by relying on a power brick rather than integrating the PSU, with the DC input sitting next to a grand total of four ports: one apiece for the audio jack, USB-C, DisplayPort and HDMI connectors. There’s no USB hub, but you can at least charge a laptop over the USB-C port…

PRICE $1,199 from philips.com This monitor packs in pretty much every feature available. You’ll enjoy 2.5GbE wired networking, a high-quality webcam, two excellent 5W speakers and, at the heart of it all, support for Thunderbolt 4. You can even daisy-chain a second monitor over USB-C, although with a 34in panel packing 3,440 x 1,440 pixels there’s already plenty of space to work. Two monitors would make a killer gaming setup, though, complete with 120Hz refresh rates and adaptive sync support. It’s a solid panel that covers 82% of the DCI-P3 colour gamut, with strong colours in default mode. Philips also provides an sRGB mode that locks to 88% of that space, but with a measured colour temperature of 7556K the whites aren’t as striking as we hoped. Nor is this…

As with all our testing, where possible we use a mix of real-world and technical tests to determine the quality of the products. Here, that means using each monitor as our daily work screen to see not just how enjoyable it is to look at but its usability: how intuitive is the on-screen display, how well engineered is the stand, how convenient are the ports? We also explore the OSD in depth to see what options it provides users. In particular, we will praise screens that allow people to switch between colour profiles – say from sRGB to DCI-P3. But only if that switch is effective, which is where our technical tests come in. These use an X-Rite i1 Display Pro HL colorimeter in tandem with the display calibration and…

UMART G5 58938 $1,799tinyurl.com/APC550umart Hitting all the notes of an entry level gaming PC, this gets all the basics right. The CPU sits nicely in the best-bang-for-your-buck zone, and with 16 threads on offer has a reasonable amount of multithreaded performance for productivity. The 32GB of RAM could’ve easily been 16GB to save some money (or help profit margins) but with 32GB quickly becoming the standard these days it leaves this system in good stead. 1TB of storage is to be expected, as is the PSU, thanks to the not so demanding GPU. The 8GB of VRAM will pinch you as time goes on, but to get your started, it’s great for anyone with eSports like aspirations or simply light gaming. CPU Intel Core i5-14400F; COOLER Thermaltake HSF; MOTHERBOARD B760M-A…

What is it? Microsoft’s new AI tool for generating and sharing five-second videos based on what you type. Videos are created in 9:16 aspect ratio (with 16:10 coming soon) and are saved for 90 days. It’s powered by Sora, the much-hyped video-generating tool from OpenAI, the company behind ChatGPT. Microsoft gushes that Bing Video Creator “empowers anyone to turn their words into wonder through an AI-generated video”. And does it do that? Well, it depends what you type. First though you need to install the Microsoft Bing Search app on your phone (a desktop PC version is coming soon). Visit bingapp.microsoft.com/bing then either click the links to go to the Apple App Store (iPhone) or Google Play Store (Android), or scan the QR code. Open the app, then tap the…

WINDOWS 10 Bring back the time in the Calendar box With the update KB5053643, released in April, Microsoft removed the time from the top of the Calendar box that appears when you click the bottom right of the Windows 10 taskbar. Microsoft made the change to reduce strain on the processor, but it still annoyed many users, who called for its return. It seems that Microsoft took notice because it has reinstated the time in the recent update KB5058481 (as shown in the screenshot below). It’s available to Windows Insiders now and should be coming to all users soon (see tinyurl.com/APC550time). WINDOWS 10 & 11 See photos taken on your iPhone and iPad on your PC You can easily view photos taken on your iPhone and iPad on your Windows…

ANDROID Share files with nearby devices using mobile data Google has updated the Quick Share feature for Android phones and tablets, which makes it easy to share files with nearby devices. Just tap the Share button at the top or bottom of the screen (depending on the app) and choose Quick Share to scan for and connect to nearby devices. Previously, Quick Share used Wi-Fi to send files from one device to another, after establishing the initial connection using Bluetooth. It’s now possible to share files over your mobile network when Wi-Fi isn’t available. This should ensure file transfers are always completed even if you lose your Wi-Fi connection before they’ve finished copying over. However, unless you’re on an unlimited data plan with your mobile network, it could also eat…

PRICE Free PLATFORM PC, Mac, Linux WEB bit.ly/FormlessStar Formless Star is a game about visiting an alien planet and recording all the weird animals that live there. And there are some really fascinatingly strange creatures here. It’s a game where you discover the creatures by sidling up and interacting with them. Every one of the 61 creatures (well, maybe not the last one, which is a special case), rewards your curiosity with a funny factoid, and more importantly with unique functions and animations. That really is your only goal: to wander around the planet and interact with everything, with no barriers in the open world that can’t be overcome, with a little perseverance. The planet is randomly generated every time you start. After two hours, I can’t deny that weariness…